Study of simplified tools for the physical characterization of farmyard manure and compost

Abstract

As soon as the operator wishes to realize attempts or tests of spreading with manures and composts, he is confronted with the difficulty in evaluating the physical characteristics of the products. Today there are tools or methods, sometimes standardized, to estimate the dry matter rate, the density, the shear strength, the presence or not of long vegetable bits... But none of these individual measurements makes it possible to qualify the product overall and their implementation is long and complicated. It is the association of several of these data, which can provide an appreciation of the physical properties of the product used. A synthetic tool, which would provide aggregate information, at the time of its employment, gathering several of the simple parameters of characterization would be very useful. It is what we sought in this study, using the measurement of the effort necessary to extract from the product to spread.